Nbc In Winner's Circle For 1985-86 Ratings' Season

April 24, 1986|By From Sentinel Services

NEW YORK — NBC won the 1985-86 prime time television ratings race, it was announced Tuesday -- the first time the network has held the title solo since the current Nielsen ratings system went into effect in 1960-61.

''I feel like the hyphen in the A-Team, I just feel horizontal,'' said Brandon Tartikoff, president of NBC Entertainment, in a closed-circuit news conference with television reporters around the country. ''It's great.''

The 1985-86 television season ended with NBC drawing a 17.5 rating and a 27 percent share of the audience, with CBS earning a 16.7 rating and a 26 percent share, while ABC came third with a 14.9 rating and a 23 percent share.

The closest NBC had ever come to being No. 1 was in the 1969-70 and 1970-71 seasons, when the network tied for top honors with CBS.

This season NBC was proud as a peacock because it ranked first in 21 weeks of the 30-week TV season (including three ties), and averaged its largest prime time audience ever -- 15 million homes.

The most popular regular series of the season by a wide margin was NBC's The Cosby Show, and the network grabbed five of the top 10 spots, with CBS taking three and ABC two.

NBC boasted the top-rated new show of the season -- The Golden Girls, which tied with ABC's Dynasty for seventh place.

The network also had the highest-rated TV movie of the season, Return to Mayberry, with another NBC movie, Perry Mason Returns in second place -- both nostalgic returns to series that originally ran on CBS.

In the miniseries category, the winner was ABC's North & South, produced by David Wolper, the man who also is producing the four-day Statue of Liberty weekend in New York City in July.

The CBS Evening News with Dan Rather remained the top rated evening news show -- making it five straight for Rather since he took over the anchor spot from Walter Cronkite. NBC Nightly News with Tom Brokaw came in second and ABC's World News Tonight was third.

There was good news for network television in its competition with cable and independent stations. The three-network share of the viewing audience went from 76.6 percent last year to 77.0 percent in 1985-86, the first time network share has gone up in the 1980s.

Here is the final prime-time television ratings for the 1985-86 season as compiled by the A.C. Nielsen Co. The 30-week season ended Sunday.